Gravity and Destiny
by Rainey Dae
Summary: Just before an emergency change-of-adress, James Potter placed an order for a new broomstick. Nine years later the dilivery goes through, to the only "Mr. Potter" they can find.
1. Chapter 1

V= ([g*t]/m)^ f

_~*~_

_Gravity, _

_Destiny,_

_Velocity, _

_Weight._

_How_

_much_

_Lift_

_for a_

_Pound _

_of_

_Fate?_

~*~

Everything was going according to schedule at Number 4, Privit Drive. It was Saturday morning—the same as practically any Saturday morning, which meant that Vernon and Dudley Dursley were asleep, Petunia Dursley was not, and Harry Potter was in a cupboard. Seventeen minutes until the smell of sausages would rouse Dudley, nineteen minutes until it would rouse Vernon, and two-and-a-half seconds until Petunia Dursley would rouse Harry Potter, who was a full three seconds from wishing he were anywhere but where he was.

Schedules so horribly precise are seconded only by Dementors in the task of sucking out a nine-year-old wizard's soul. It was a good thing, then, for nine-year-old Harry Potter, that things would not be going according to schedule for long.

The schedule continued until seven forty-three.

Seven forty-three was when Harry Potter fetched the newspaper.

Seven forty-three was when a man arrived.

Seven forty-three was when the schedule experienced a mild hiccough, followed by severe internal hemorrhaging.

The man who arrived at seven forty-three was not an especially interesting man—he was an insurance salesman.

He did not have a memorable car, nor an attaché case full of cash, or a familial relation to the small black-haired boy, or a magic wand.

All he had was a sensible business suit he did not quite fill, a younger half-brother with an unusual favor to ask of him, and a package.

The package, though, was devastatingly interesting.

Fredric Alkerton was just the only man uninteresting enough to deliver it.

The uninteresting man stepped out of his uninteresting car, just as Harry Potter, a prophesized savior with bacon to fry, reached the morning paper.

"Hello," said Fredric. Harry clutched the newspaper and addressed the front walk.

"I'll go get Uncle Vernon." he said quickly, wondering as he turned weather it would be worth stalling the man to save himself from waking his uncle, though he was more or less resigned to the idea that he was in for a scolding and out a meal no matter what he did next. That was how the schedule went.

"Hang on," the man called, after confirming that he was at the right address. "I'm looking for a 'Mr. Potter.'"

Harry nearly dropped the paper.

"You're looking for _me?_"

Fredric smiled. "That I am, Mr. Potter, assuming you are the only 'Mr. Potter' of the household."

Harry nodded silently.

"Well then this," he pulled the long, skinny package out of the backseat of his car—the devastatingly interesting package, "is for you. It's…" he fought back a smile. As someone who bore absolutely no blame for the situation, he found it rather amusing. "Well, you see, it's nearly nine years overdue." Harry let the man lay the package across his outstretched palms and found it to be surprisingly light, despite being easily taller than Harry was himself. "As I understand it," he continued, "there have been several dozen unsuccessful attempts to deliver this. If you could sign here…"

He held out a yellow delivery form detailing in elaborate lime green text the conditions of the purchase. Harry, for lack of anything better to do, laid the package on the grass and painstakingly penned his name in the loopy and still-clumsy letters that he knew he ought to use for official documents such as this. He even included the 'J.' because it seemed the proper thing to do.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter. You get this, in case you need to contact the manufacturers in regards to your purchase… here, you can have this too, seeing as you're so hard to reach." He handed Harry first a receipt and then one of his own business cards. "Just give me a ring and I can get you connected to my brother. He's the one who's been trying to get this sent, actually... oh, and I'm supposed to inform you that your place of residence had been warded against all owls, including those with official delivery qualifications, and was unreachable by several official representatives of Aurora Borealis Broomsticks. Their muggle half brothers, though, are another matter entirely," he said with a wry smile, "you can't keep the commoners out."

Fredric walked back to his car as he spoke. Harry didn't quite know how to respond.

"I'd best be off. You have fun with that, I think you'll find it well worth the wait."

The man had started his car and begun to drive away before Harry remembered to shout his thanks, just as his uncle Vernon noticed his absence.

"Get in here boy, bacon's not going to fry itself!" he bellowed, loud enough that he didn't have to concern himself with where his nephew actually was, "And where the devil is the newspaper?"

Harry scurried back into the house, overcome with a sudden panic. If he could get to the cupboard, just for an instant… he edged past the door. Petunia was at the stove, back turned on her accursed nephew, Vernon was sitting so that the back wall of the hallway was out of his line of sight, and Dudly was far too engrossed with his breakfast to notice either his cousin or the foot-and-a-half of paper-wrapped parcel that stuck up from behind Harry's back. Harry sprinted the last few steps and dumped everything into his cupboard save the newspaper.

He had lived in with his relatives for long enough to know that large and mysterious (not to mention devastatingly interesting) packages addressed to him would not be tolerated, but he was not about to give up the only package he had ever received without a fight. He shut the package in his cupboard just as his spatula-brandishing Aunt chose that moment to crane her neck around the kitchen door.

"There you are!" She screeched "Come on, come on, the bacon is going to burn!"

Harry slipped back into the schedule without another word. The newspaper got delivered and the bacon did not burn, but for once, Harry did not imagine himself away to a happier place. For once, he imagined himself right back inside his cupboard, with a large and mysterious package to open. The man had said something, though. Harry thought back to the short conversation… something about wizards, and muggles, and owls… and broomsticks.

He had definitely said something about broomsticks.

~*~

_With an_

_Ounce_

_of_

_Magic_

_for a _

_Quart_

_of _

_Sky,_

_Will_

_You_

_Fall_

_or_

_Will_

_You_

_Fly?_

_~*~_

* * *

A/N: Found this while fishing around in word documents. Wrote it a few months ago. Does anybody want to read more of this? Does anybody actually care? Is it just a re-hash of crap you've already read? Please let me know! If I do continue, while I can't promise a planned-out story arc or an ending, I can promise that it won't be, despite the premise, fluffy beyond belief.

Props to anyone who figures out the variables in the formula of the title. Double-props to anyone who knows what formula this is based on.


	2. Chapter 2

2

~*~

_Take_

_a_

_Breath_

_and_

_Fight_

_the_

_Tide--_

_the_

_Future_

_isn't_

_Cut_

_and_

_Dried_

~*~

Harry got his first opportunity alone with his package later that evening, when the Dursleys went out to dinner to celebrate Dudley's passing marks. For all his excitement, though, Harry lingered outside his cupboard even after the sounds of the Dursley's car had faded out of earshot. There was a horrible, gnawing part of him that knew that the sooner he opened the cupboard, the sooner he would have to walk the package over to Mrs. Number Seven and explain that there had been an error at the post office. The sooner he opened the package, the sooner he would have to explain to his uncle why the big, expensive, misaddressed drill part had arrived pre-opened, a day late, and with Harry's name on it.

Soon enough, his excitement turned to dread, and he could finally open his package—because Harry could deal with disappointment, and he could do things he very much did not want to do, but he hardly knew what to do with himself when faced with something that might, on some off-chance, actually make him happy. Since he was once again on familiar ground, he took a deep breath, opened the cupboard door, and realized all over again that this was more than an accident. Fortunately, seeing as his heart rate was such that any small noise might have easily killed him, he was already committed to opening it, and could stall no longer.

He tore away the paper with jerky, trembling movements, unable to think and forgetting to breathe, and by the time he broke through the packaging, he knew that it was something special. Unfortunately, he had no idea what.

By all conventional standards, it was a broomstick, but Harry had never before seen a broomstick that looked as though it would jump out of his hands and beat him over the head with itself should he ever try and sweep the floors with it. As he turned it over, the glow from the porch light fell on the broom handle and lit up the lettering on one side with a coppery-red glow.

"Comet X." he read quietly.

He sat there for far longer than he would ever realize, in the dark of the hall with his thoughts and his broomstick. There was something that held him there, a quiet awe, and a feeling that he and the broomstick had been waiting for each other for a very long time.

He slipped back into his cupboard when the headlights of the Dursley's car flashed through the front windows, but it wasn't without an inexplicable feeling of shame. Part of him felt that even if he didn't quite know what to do with a broomstick, he could work it out if he tried, and that hiding in his cupboard was no way to try. That was why, after the Dursleys had all gone to bed, he crept out of his cupboard with his broomstick and into the garden.

Of course, he still had no idea what he was supposed to do, so he sat for a while longer admiring the effect of the moonlight on the wood.

Before long, he got to playing with it a bit. He twirled it like a drill rifle (but quickly stopped, because it was far too dignified a broom to do such a thing with) and rolled it along his forearms for a while as he sat cross-legged on the garden bench. He was on the edge of considering that maybe it was just a very nice-looking broom, when it slipped from his fingers and fell, gracefully, smoothly, and a considerably shorter distance than one would expect a broomstick to fall.

Harry froze, and then grinned. It was a flying broomstick, and he was more surprised that it had taken him this long to figure it out. Sure, it didn't make sense, but it was a broomstick, and he had just seen it fly. If that wasn't proof enough, he didn't know what was. He reached out tentatively and pushed the broom through the air. It hovered along at just the right height to sit on, had he been so inclined.

He was just beginning to consider the implications when Vernon (who, occasionally, if he needed a bit of cheering up during a late-night run for a slice of pie or a glass of brandy, woke Harry up just to be sure that he was still asleep) stormed into the yard and demanded to know, in a whisper like a lawnmower-engine, what the bloody hell he thought he was doing in the garden at this time of night with a broomstick, besides waking the whole blasted neighborhood.

"Nothing, Uncle Vernon, sir." Harry said quickly, as he pulled the broom behind his back in a very poor attempt to hide it.

"Nothing is right, boy!" spat Vernon, "Nothing worthwhile since you came to this house! NOTHING! What is that, anyway, stolen?" he had dropped all pretences of whispering, and Harry was sure that if he could have seen his uncle's face through the dark, it would have been turning a most remarkable shade of purple. "Oh, that's it, isn't it?" Vernon took a slow step towards Harry, like some massive bathrobe-clad predator. "You've been out all the time, nicking the neighbor's household things. And what then? Selling them on the black market?"

"Uncle, I—"

"That's it—PETUNIA!"

Harry winced. Not because his aunt was flying through the house in her pajamas followed by a shrill, bird-like repetition of "Vernon! _Vernon!" _(although that certainly wasn't pleasant under any circumstances), but because Vernon's shouts had awoken the neighbor's dogs, and, in turn, the neighbors, and they had all started shouting at each other about how they had heard a that mixer, or a spoon, or the television remote, had gone missing just last week, and now they'd caught the thief.

"Clever, too" said the man from number six, in nothing but a bath towel, "Nothing we would even bother reporting! Makes us think we've just misplaced them!"

"Always knew he was a bad sort, that boy…"

"Has someone called the police yet?"

"Vernon!" Petunia had finally made it into the garden, now nearly in tears, "Vernon what is this about? Look at the _neighbors_, what will they _think?_"

"Petunia, the boy's a common thief, and he's got to go!"

Dudley made it downstairs and joined his family, while the neighbors poured out of their houses to crane at the garden wall and shout gossip across to their neighbors, all around a nine year old boy with nothing to his name but a broomstick, which happened to be nearly a meter longer than him and quite inconvenient for a person who would rather not be noticed at all.

"Alright then." Harry said at last, a bizarre boldness coming over neighbors fell silent and looked at him, as he drew himself up every inch of his meager hight.

"Be quiet, boy," Vernon started, "I'll have no—"

"I'll leave."

Vernon narrowed his eyes at his nephew, who only nodded mildly as he spun the broomstick from behind his back so that it was horizontal before him. He cast one last decisive look over the house, the neighbors, and the people he had lived with for most of his life, pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, and twisted his hands securely around the broom handle.

"Goodbye." he said calmly. "I never liked it much here, anyway." With that, he ran a few steps, kicked one leg over the broomstick, and flew off into the night, regretting only that he would never know just what the Dursleys were going to tell the police.

~*~

_When _

_Order's_

_Gone_

_and_

_Reason's_

_Died,_

_What_

_can_

_you_

_Do_

_but_

_Enjoy_

_the_

_Ride?_

~*~

* * *

A/N: Here we go, second chapter for both the people reading this (thanks for reviewing, by the way!). Hope it's not too strange? Oh well, it's supposed to be kind of funny.

The formula in the title I was originally going to use ( V= ([g*t]/m)^f, but the punctuation didn't show up, so I changed it) is the formula for the velocity of a falling object (velocity equals gravity times time) with the added variables of magic and fate.

Second random trivia question: Fredric Alkerton (the delivery guy) is related to an unnamed canon character. There's a very solid connection between them, but it's a pretty obscure character. Any guesses?


End file.
